Meditation on Transience

         A dead bird lies 12 centimeters to the east of the center-line on a desert road. The line is painted a jaundice yellow, faded and cracked from the desert sun. When facing North, the upper left portion is defaced with chips of paint peeled back from the pavement, revealing the hot, wet asphalt underneath. Cracks run in every which way, creating a labyrinth without end. The small ruptures dissect the line in convoluting, alien patterns. Between the larger of the cracks, running parallel to each other, are a multitude of smaller and more violent ridges. These ridges are easy to become lost in. A rumination of the strange canyons built in labyrinthine designs brimming up from the asphalt reveals layers upon layers of dust.

         A dead bird lies 12 centimeters to the east of the center-line on a desert road. A crack in the center-line draws out to the east 10 centimeters. The wing of the dead bird is stretched out and ends two centimeters from the end of the fissure. To the north, a centimeter from the wing is a drop of blood. The droplet creates a 42 degree acute angle with it being the vertex, one end being the tip of the wing, one end being the end of the sprawling crack. It is a deep crimson, glinting in the light of the desert sun, 148 million kilometers away. It is a perfect ruby sphere boiling up from the road. Vermilion. Scarlet. Sanguine. A small rivulet dribbles away in the sable crevices of the asphalt. The warm air had begun to coagulate the blood; the edges have become a dark, black tar, hardened and fused to the road. A white hair from an unidentified desert creature has embedded itself in the droplet; one end of the thin, white hair points to the sun, blowing gently in the gusts of desert wind. The smell of blood and rust is thick.

         A dead bird lies 12 centimeters to the east of the center-line  on a desert road and two centimeters south of a drop of blood; the smell of blood and rust is thick. The bird is in tatters, broken and crumpled in to a mound of feathers and exposed organs. The heat of the sun, 148 million kilometers away, cooks the intestines, giving off a putrid odor. The feathers are as black as the ridges of the coagulated blood, two centimeters north of the tip of one of its wings, and are beginning to amalgamate to the bloody tissue. A pale goo, thick in consistency, fuses the feathers and meat. Engraved with thin blue veins is the intestine, exposed to the heat of the desert sun, 148 million kilometers away. The pattern of veins is vaguely reminiscent of a labyrinthine structure. A vein along the lower side of the intestine is coated in a dried layer of blood. There are three small pools of blood brimming up to the surface along the vein. Three little seas of blood in the middle of a labyrinth. In the middle of a labyrinth, along the lower vein of an exposed organ heated by the desert sun, are three small seas of blood.

         A dead bird lies 12 centimeters to the east of the center-line on a desert road and two centimeters south of a drop of blood; the smell of blood and rust is thick. Three pools of blood form a straight line along a vein of an exposed organ. The line points to the beak of the bird. The beak is a jaundice yellow, worn from the desert sun, 148 million kilometers away. When facing North, the left side of the beak reveals a chip. The ridge around the indention is rugged and sharp. In the valley formed by violent ridges in the beak, is a smear of rust. Red rust. Crimson rust. Vermilion rust boiling up from the beak; a small smear of red rust boils up from the beak.

         The desert sun, 148 million kilometers away, warms the rust along a dead bird’s beak. A bird lies.